First Professional Baseball Team

In 1869, the Cincinnati Red Stockings fielded the first baseball club that openly paid every one of its players a salary. The move marked a turning point in the sport's history, separating the idea of baseball as a gentleman's pastime from baseball as a business and an entertainment industry. It paved the way for the professional leagues that followed.

Organized baseball had grown rapidly in the northeastern United States during the 1850s, and its popularity spread further as soldiers played the game during the Civil War. Clubs were officially amateur, but the reality was murkier. Strong teams had long been tempted to lure talented players with under-the-table payments, jobs with little real work, or other perks. This quiet practice was widely known, and by the late 1860s the pressure to compete and to draw paying crowds made the pretense increasingly hard to sustain.

The Cincinnati club decided to drop the pretense. Its leadership, including club president Aaron Champion, backed a plan to assemble the best team money could buy and to pay the players openly. Harry Wright, an English-born former cricketer who had played in the East, was hired to manage and captain the team and recruited talent from other cities. His brother George Wright, a shortstop widely regarded as one of the finest players of his day, was the club's star. The team's red knee-length stockings gave it its name and a distinctive look.

The results on the field were remarkable. The Red Stockings toured the country by rail, playing against local clubs from the East Coast to California, and are generally credited with going through the 1869 season without a loss. Crowds turned out to see them, and newspapers followed their progress closely. Accounts of their exact record vary slightly depending on how tie or exhibition games are counted, but the general picture of near-total dominance is well established. Their winning streak continued into 1870 before ending in a famous defeat in Brooklyn.

The financial side was less successful. Despite the enthusiasm, expenses were high, and the club did not turn a large profit. After the team's run ended and local support cooled, the Cincinnati club disbanded its professional squad. The lasting impact, however, was already clear. In 1871 the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players was formed, and in 1876 the National League was founded, establishing the structure of major league baseball. Harry Wright went on to manage the Boston club in those early leagues, and the Red Stockings are remembered as the pioneers who made professionalism an open and accepted part of the game.